Hotels Turn Down the Bed for Foreign Tourists

From multilingual websites to larger beds, Japanese hotels are trying much harder to cater to the needs of foreign guests. The country is looking to woo more visitors from overseas and this new focus on foreign clientele is likely to further intensify following the selection of Tokyo to host the 2020 Olympic Games.

European Pressphoto Agency

Chinese tourists take a photo in front of Tokyo’s Rainbow Bridge. Hotels in Japan are making more effort to attract tourists from abroad as the government seeks to raise foreign visitor levels above 10 million a year.

According to a survey by the Nikkei released earlier this month, the hotel occupancy rate for major Tokyo establishments in July was 84%, the highest for the month since 2005. The average occupancy for urban hotels nationwide was not far behind, at 79%, according to the Japan City Hotels Association.

Consultants looking to help hotels appeal to foreign visitors say the first step is language: Hotels need to move on from Japanese-only websites and even Japanese-English sites.

Osamu Urasawa, who runs O.H. Co., a company offering website design and translation services mainly to hotels, said there’s much more demand for multi-lingual websites, offering languages beyond Japanese and English. This year, Mr. Urasawa said his company has designed almost 10 websites in Thai, a language hotels had little demand for in the past.

“About 10 years ago, there was a sense among hotels that they didn’t need to depend on foreign guests, but now they’ve learned that foreign visitors are also reliable on weekdays when the number of Japanese guests might be low,” he said.

Mr. Urasawa added that many Japanese hotel operators do not have the budget flexibility to immediately change their foreign tourist strategy following the Olympic decision. But he said he expected hotel demand for multilingual websites to rise when the next fiscal year begins in April.

Once guests have made reservations, the next step is getting them to their hotels. For Nagano prefecture-based Hoshino Resorts Co., whose 14 establishments targeted at foreigners are situated outside of Tokyo, accommodating more inbound tourists means being creative about transportation.

Spokeswoman Kyoko Tanzawa said the group saw a jump in interest among guests from Hong Kong, the U.S. and France when it ran a joint program coordinating accommodation and flights with All Nippon Airways, making it easier for foreign guests to get to locations like the southern island prefecture of Okinawa during their stay. The chain has paired up with East Japan Railway this fall, offering visitors detailed instructions on how to take advantage of the rail company’s discount passes to travel around Japan and visit the group’s resorts.

Ms. Tanzawa said the company also provides detailed directions, including images of ticket gates, bus stops and signboards on its website, for tourists who prefer to get to the hotels by themselves.

Some hotels, meanwhile, have focused on making their interiors more attractive for international clients.
Among them, the Prince Sakura Tower Tokyo closed for a makeover in early July. It reopened Saturday with a spruced up look, wireless internet, 134 rooms with king-sized beds (up from 82) and its first-ever Western restaurant, arguably an indication more of how far the hotel was from a vision of foreign convenience.
The hotel is trying to double the proportion of its foreign guests to 50% of its total clientele in 2014 from a projected 25% in 2013.

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Japan Real Time is a newsy, concise guide to what works, what doesn’t and why in the one-time poster child for Asian development, as it struggles to keep pace with faster-growing neighbors while competing with Europe for Michelin-rated restaurants. Drawing on the expertise of The Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones Newswires, the site provides an inside track on business, politics and lifestyle in Japan as it comes to terms with being overtaken by China as the world’s second-biggest economy. You can contact the editors at japanrealtime@wsj.com